Tender Is the Bite Read online

We drove back through Zinc Town, headlights off, and parked in front of the EZ AZ Desert Tours and Mini Golf ranch house, not as close as before. I smelled danger. Then I realized the smell was us. Who has it better than me? Bernie opened the glove box and took out the flashlight and the .38 Special. He’s a crack shot, in case that hasn’t come up yet, can hit spinning dimes in the air, turning them into a kind of music like tiny cymbals. Whoever we were hunting tonight—that part not yet clear to me—was in big trouble.

  We walked past the ranch house—no lights showing inside—and were soon on a trail that took us into the hills. What a bright night, everything so clear: the big boulders, the spiky plants, the ATV tracks crisscrossing the trail and heading this way and that through the desert. I couldn’t have been in a better mood. Bernie was in the lead, not our usual MO, but I was cool with it. That’s how good my mood was! Also I had no idea where we were going or why. Possibly we were just out for a lovely moonlit stroll. But then why the .38? I moved into the lead.

  “Smell anything, big guy?”

  Uh-oh. Where to begin? With the pack rat that had recently crossed our path? The sidewinder hidden behind a barrel cactus that Bernie’s arm almost brushed as he passed by? The gray fox, high on a branch of a mesquite tree at the crest of the hill? How annoying was that, by the way? But did Bernie want to know any of those things? Or would he be more interested in the smell of a human male, a recent scent although not from today, a scent with … with a garlic add-on?

  I sped up, following the scent of the man with the garlic add-on.

  “Good boy,” Bernie said.

  Eight

  I forgot to mention the ATV smell, also recent although not from today. It mixed together with the garlic scent and led us off the trail, up a steep ridge, and across a rocky plateau. And what was this? A member of the nation within had passed this way? A female, to be precise, and with a scent that reminded me of something, something about me, a bit confusing. The next thing I knew, I’d broken into what Bernie calls my go-to trot. The go-to trot is a fine way to travel. You feel so light you can keep it up for a long time, all day and all night if you have to.

  Although maybe not you. After a while, even Bernie, probably stronger than you, actually by a lot—no offense—was huffing and puffing behind me. I wanted to slow down for him, but I just couldn’t, on account of a sound I was starting to pick up, a soft, low moan that pain sometimes draws out of one of my kind. All that—the scents of ATV and garlic and a member of the nation within, plus the moaning—led me to the other side of the plateau and up a hill. There was a hole in the side of this hill. I was familiar with holes like this. They led to abandoned mines, which Bernie and I liked to explore from time to time. We’ve found all sorts of treasure on our mine adventures, like an old wagon wheel and a canteen with an arrowhead stuck in it. The fun we had! But I already knew this particular adventure wasn’t going to be like that. I’ve been around.

  Bernie switched on the flashlight and shone it into the mine. The first thing we saw was a green ATV, just inside the entrance, the key glinting in the ignition. The moans were clearer now, but no louder, if that makes sense. Pain doesn’t make us noisy, me and my kind. We keep it inside. Why? I don’t know. We just do.

  Bernie came up beside me, shining the light this way and that. Some mines go deep in the mountain and some do not. This was the second kind. It was also the kind, fairly common, with crushed beer cans and crumpled wrappers on the floor. There was also a rolled-up sleeping bag, a foam mattress, and a backpack—not from the olden days but from nowadays—and beyond them two shadowy forms, both lying still on the hard-packed dirt. Bernie took the .38 from his pocket and aimed the flashlight beam slowly and carefully over every bit of the mine as though he expected to see something. All I saw were the rock-studded earthen walls, a blackened wooden beam or two, and lying not far from the backpack one of those long tubelike things photographers sometimes screw onto their cameras. We moved closer to the two forms, and Bernie shone the light on them.

  The nearest form was a man, a man who smelled of garlic and blood—not wet, fresh blood, but the dried, crusty kind. The man lay on his back, one arm out to the side, his hand making the stop sign, his eyes open, dull, still. He had a red hole in his forehead, and blood had leaked onto his face, but I still recognized him: the big, shaved-head dude who’d kidnapped—would that be how to put it?—little Griffie from the Porsche. He gave off one other smell, not particularly strong now although it soon would be, the smell that meant whoever he had once been was now gone for good. Griffie had been here, too, by the way, and recently, although there was no sign of him now.

  What came next was the kind of surprise you sometimes get in our line of work. The man’s eyes moved the slightest bit in Bernie’s direction. Then his lips moved, too, also just the slightest bit. He spoke, his voice low and whispery.

  “Golf,” he said.

  Bernie tilted his head, his ear almost touching the man’s lips.

  “What about golf?” Bernie said.

  There was no answer. The man’s eyes half closed and stayed that way. Bernie put his finger to the man’s neck, held it there, took it away. The no-longer-living smell drifted up from the man’s open mouth, stronger now, and very certain.

  Bernie rose and shifted the flashlight beam to the second form. This was not a man, or a human at all, but a member of the nation within, female, lying on her side with blood—fresh blood—dampening the fur on her chest, and her one visible eye closed. Her coat was black all over, except for one ear, which was … white. I thought back to Sergeant Wauneka’s office and was trying to remember exactly what had gone down on that visit, when the closed eye slowly opened, looking first at nothing and then at us.

  Bernie knelt beside her. “Trixie,” he said.

  * * *

  Bernie lay the flashlight on the floor of the mine, illuminating Trixie in the cone of yellow light. Then he took off his T-shirt and tore it into strips. Trixie’s eye stayed on him. The fresh blood smell got stronger and stronger, made it hard for me to think about anything else. Would licking the wound be the right move? I … I wanted to, but Bernie had something in mind, and I’d never want to mess that up, and yet still, what would be the harm of—

  “Chet? Just sit tight. We’ll be okay.”

  Sit tight was a tricky one, not a command, really, more like a suggestion. It didn’t even mean sit. It meant … well, I wasn’t sure, but knowing we were going to be okay settled my mind very nicely. Bernie, his hands so gentle, slid the T-shirt strips under Trixie and wrapped them around her. She went on making those soft moans, but so quietly now I hardly knew they were there, like the weakest breeze.

  Bernie turned to me. “No way to cover all the bases.” He rose, lit the face of the shaved-head man, took out his phone, and went click. Then he came back and bent over Trixie. “She comes first. But maybe we can keep this little scene to ourselves a bit longer.”

  Ourselves meant me and Bernie, so whatever he was talking about sounded right. He lifted Trixie up in one smooth motion, not slow, not fast, carried her over to the ATV, and laid her on the little platform in back. She watched him the whole time. I watched her watching him, except for when I heard a crunch from high up the hill, beyond the mine, the kind of crunch a boot heel might make. I listened carefully, but it didn’t come again.

  “Squeeze in next to me, big guy,” Bernie said.

  In that tiny space? I gave it my best shot, found the only way I could do it was by facing the little platform, meaning that our faces, mine and Trixie’s, were almost touching, all the way back to the EZ AZ ranch house. Her eyes were like soft silver in the moonlight, and she only moaned once or twice. A little bit of blood leaked through the T-shirt strips, and I licked it up, the right thing to do, no question. We parked beside the Porsche and got Trixie settled in the shotgun seat. I took the little shelf, no problem. As we drove away, Bernie had a long look at the ranch house, dark and silent. That made sense. Wouldn’t Lukie and
Poppop be fast asleep? That was as far as I could take it on my own.

  * * *

  I prefer outdoors to indoors, but I’m cool with pretty much any indoor space, except for Amy’s waiting room. It’s not that I don’t like Amy, because I do. She’s our vet, a big strong woman with big strong hands that know what’s what, but even though I like her, I don’t like hanging with her, not in her office, where I always start shaking. Her office includes the waiting room, the parking lot, and a few surrounding blocks. Shameful, I know, but I just can’t help myself.

  Bernie scratched between my ears, finding the perfect spot, as always. “How about you wait in the car? You’ll be more comfortable.”

  What was this? Bernie waiting inside and me waiting outside? Out of the question. I couldn’t have been any more comfortable. Except for the shaking part, which I was going to shut down this very second. There! Or perhaps not. No matter. I made myself immovable. We waited.

  * * *

  The steel door that led to the room I liked even less than the waiting room opened, and Amy entered, taking off her mask and gloves.

  “Cautious optimism, Bernie,” she said.

  “Thank god,” said Bernie.

  “She’s not out of the woods yet.”

  That was a bit of a puzzler. If we were talking about Trixie, she hadn’t actually been in the woods but in a mine in mostly open country. Bernie says that Amy’s the best vet in the Valley, so I gave her a pass.

  “—a lot of blood,” she was saying, “but no organ damage.” She handed Bernie a baggie. He opened it and took out a bullet round.

  “Thirty-two,” he said.

  “Promise me you’ll catch the bastard who did this,” Amy said.

  “I can’t—”

  “Promise.”

  Bernie nodded.

  Amy turned my way, gave me a close look. “Big brother,” she said.

  “For sure?” Bernie said.

  “Can’t be sure without a DNA test, but—”

  The door to Amy’s parking lot flew open, and a woman came running in. I didn’t recognize her at first, out of uniform, but it was Weatherly Wauneka, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, her glossy black hair not tied up, instead hanging long and free down her back. The look in her eyes reminded me of the eyes of a mama mountain lion I’d once had a much-too-close encounter with, if we leave out the fact that the eyes of the lion were yellow and Weatherly’s were deepest brown, almost black.

  Weatherly covered her chest. “How is she? Is it really her?”

  “Weatherly,” said Bernie. “This is Amy, our vet.”

  “As I was telling Bernie,” Amy said and then went into that whole confusing out-of-the-woods thing again. We’d found Trixie in a mine, not in the woods! Getting the facts straight is a big part of what we do at the Little Detective Agency, almost as important as shooting dimes out of the air or chasing javelinas. Meanwhile, Amy placed a big square hand on Weatherly’s back, drew her to the steel door, and led her into that too-bright room on the other side.

  We sat in the waiting room. Bernie gazed at the .32 round lying in the palm of his hand. My Bernie! He was thinking hard, poor guy. Whoa! I realized I wasn’t thinking at all! I didn’t have one single thought in my whole mind, a vast empty space at the moment, and actually quite pleasant, reminding me of the desert. Well, well. My mind was like the desert? How come I was just finding that out now? It explained … everything. Amazing! I now knew everything about me. And it was still early morning. Today was going to be a doozie.

  The steel door opened. Weatherly came out alone, tears on her face although she made no crying sounds. Suzie cried in that exact same way.

  Weatherly saw us watching, gave her head a quick shake, and wiped away the tears on the back of her arm.

  “I thought I’d never see her again,” she said. “I let myself down, and I let her down.”

  “Oh?” Bernie said.

  “By giving up hope.”

  “Um,” Bernie began, “no need to—”

  “Bernie.”

  “Yes?”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “I can never repay you.”

  “It’s not a thing where, um…”

  Weatherly stepped forward and gave Bernie a hug. He pat-patted her on the back, at the same time looking at me over her shoulder in a not-totally-comfortable way. Did the hug seem to be taking longer than normal? I thought so. Human hugging is another big subject, maybe even bigger than human spitting, which we didn’t go into before, but can I just mention that in a lot of hugs the huggers weren’t really feeling each other? They’re hugging in a distant sort of way, like Bernie now. Weatherly wasn’t hugging in a distant way. She was … how to put it? Getting a sense of Bernie? Not that she was moving her hands around or anything like that. In fact, I might have been completely wrong. But then came a change in Bernie, and he was getting a sense of her, too.

  I know quite a bit about boxing. After Charlie went away to live full-time with Leda and Malcolm at their place in High Chaparral Estates, we watched a lot of old fights on TV, me and Bernie, both of us on our feet most of the time. Sugar Ray Robinson and Carmen Basilio! Sugar Ray Leonard and Marvin Hagler! The Thrilla in Manila! Don’t get me started! The point I was making is that I’ve observed the behavior of boxing referees and know how to break up clinches, which is what I did now, squeezing in between them.

  Weatherly laughed. She turned out to have one of those really big laughs that take you by surprise. “Who have we here?”

  Me, Chet. That was who we had here. Surely she knew that already?

  “Heh-heh,” said Bernie.

  “He really is formidable,” Weatherly said.

  I had no idea what that meant, but I liked the sound. I tried it out in my mind: Chet the Formidable. I’d never remember that. Chet the Jet would have to do.

  “What’s next?” Weatherly said.

  “Head back out there,” said Bernie. “Pick up the thread.”

  “Trixie’s staying here, of course, probably for a week, Amy says. And I’m off today.”

  “Then you can go home and get some rest.”

  “I’m coming with you.”

  “Very nice of you,” Bernie said. “But I don’t really—”

  “It has nothing to do with nice,” said Weatherly. “I’m already involved in the case.”

  “True,” said Bernie. “But there could be problems, you being a cop and all.”

  “You don’t trust us?” Weatherly said.

  “Not all of you, not all of the time.”

  So that was that, a happy ending. Except Weatherly said, “First sign of a problem, I’m gone without a word.”

  And Bernie said, “Okay.”

  Here’s an important fact that Weatherly seemed to be missing. The Little Detective Agency is me and Bernie, end of story. My job now was to make sure she learned that fact in no uncertain terms.

  Nine

  Outside in Amy’s parking lot, Bernie reached for his phone. “Before we get started, let’s make sure this is our guy.”

  Weatherly leaned in to see the picture on Bernie’s little screen. I leaned in, too, not to see the picture—although I couldn’t miss it, the ruined face of the shaved-head dude, lying in the mine—but just to show Weatherly that my leaning-in skills were as good as hers. Or better.

  She blinked, possibly because she’d somehow poked her eye on the tip of one of my ears, and said, “Mickey Rottoni, beyond a doubt. Did he steal Trixie to get back at me?”

  “No proof of that,” Bernie said.

  “What’s another possibility?”

  “Don’t have one.”

  “Then that’ll be our working theory,” Weatherly said. “Want me to follow in my car?”

  Certainly, if you have to come at all. That was the answer I expected from Bernie, although probably without that second part, since he can be a little too nice at times. But what I heard was: “Hell, why not squeeze in with us? We’ll d
rop you back here.”

  There are things in life you just have to accept gracefully. What’s the point of fighting battles you can’t win? Actually, there was plenty of point, but no time to figure out the how and why, or even one of them. Instead, as gracefully as possible, I leaped into the Porsche, landing squarely in the shotgun seat, bull’s-eye. I sat up tall, facing forward, alert and ready to take on all comers in ways they wouldn’t soon forget, a total pro.

  “Um,” Bernie said.

  “Plenty of room for me on that shelf,” Weatherly said. “I’ve got good flexibility.”

  Bernie shot her a very quick look, the meaning unknown to me. A minute later, we were on the move, a warm breeze in our hair and the seating arrangement as good as it could be under the circumstances.

  * * *

  Out of the Valley, in the desert, two-lane blacktop, open road as far as you could see. I was feeling tip-top, when from behind me Weatherly said, “How fast can this thing go?”

  “Thing?” said Bernie, at the same time tromping down on the gas, pedal to the metal. The engine roared like a mighty creature, and the car shot forward like … like we were going to take off and fly to the sun!

  Weatherly laughed that huge laugh of hers and shouted, “Wow! Wow, wow, wow!”

  Bernie ramped us down to where we could hear ourselves think, as humans say. No actual thoughts seemed to be going on in my head, so I soon stopped listening.

  We drove up into the hills. Weatherly leaned forward, pretty close to getting in my space. “I’m part Navajo,” she said.

  “I wondered,” said Bernie.

  “In what context?”

  “No context. Just wondering.”

  Weatherly sat back. Saguaros appeared, lining the road in a friendly way like they were looking out for us. I spotted the one with the bullet holes, where Bernie and I had had our picnic. Weatherly leaned forward again.

  “My grandmother’s a tribal member,” she said. “It turns out she knows something about you.”